Wicked Hard Night-O version 3
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Pawtuckaway State Park
September 6, 2008

This year's event was rechristened as the "World's Wettest Night-O" by
Steve Olafsen, since the remnants of Hurricane Hanna arrived shortly
around dinnertime, and there were torrential rains all through the
event (and the rest of the night).  As a result, there were almost as
many entries for the WHN-O as there were for the Vampire-O, since most
of the WHN-O runners are diehards who can stand up to anything.

Except utter darkness.  We had two lamp failures this year: Ross
Smith's big headlamp petered out around the first control and he made
it back with his little LED backup.  But Erik Nystrom had the more
exciting problem, running into a tree up at the north end of the map
and smashing his headlamp.  Imagine being in the jaws of Pawtuckaway
at about 9 PM, in absolute blackness, in the pouring rain.  "It was
very dark, and I had no reserve light", he notes, "I was really
scared".  A long time until dawn, but fortunately, since he was in the
lead, not so long before other runners arrived (good thing this didn't
happen to the last runner!).  Brendan and Emily caught up a few
minutes later, Emily loaned Erik her backup light, and the three of
them completed the course together.  (I guess I need to be fussier
about enforcing the "everybody needs two lights" rule!)

Huge thanks to Ross, who went out on Sunday and did the course,
picking up the controls as he went, thus saving me from having to do
that.  He even picked up the "extra control #29", which apparently
never got retrieved from last year's course, and at least three people
stumbled across it in the dark this year.

J-J Cote

1) Brendan Shields      12      100:09
1) Emily Kemp           12      100:09
1) Erik Nystrom         12      100:09
4) Andrew Childs        12      140:05
5) Randy Kemp           12      140:13
6) Peter Gagarin        12      140:55
7) Jim Arsenault        10      129:35
8) Barb Bryant          9       178:20
8) Geoff Elder          9       178:20
10) Charlie DeWeese     7        91:35
11) Phil Bricker        7        98:25
12) Dean Sturtevant     5       165:13
13) Ross Smith          1        17:15